Woman Named President of Claremont McKenna

The trustees of Claremont McKenna College on Wednesday appointed Duke law school dean Pamela Brooks Gann as the new president of the former men’s college.

Her appointment set faculty members abuzz, but not because she’s the first woman to lead the 52-year-old institution that went coed in 1976 and later changed its name from Claremont Men’s College.

Rather the conservative professors unearthed evidence that she might be--gasp!--a Democrat.

They discovered that she and her husband had made political donations to Democrats, including a political upstart who had the audacity to challenge Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

They found out that she bucked young Republican students who wanted a moment of silence during the 1994 commencement ceremony in memory of its most famous alumnus, Richard Nixon. She also artfully deflected a highly politicized campaign two years ago to pull Nixon’s portrait out of the closet, where it had been in storage since Watergate.

Digging deeper though, they came across other things that made them more comfortable: This longtime law school dean wrote a touching eulogy about Nixon and listed another infamous Duke law school grad as a reference: Kenneth Starr.

Then there are her stellar academic credentials. As a legal scholar and expert in tax law and international trade, her background seems to fit nicely with the school’s mission that emphasizes business, economics and public affairs.

“Her expertise suggests a good practical bent,” said Ralph Rossum, a government professor and former Reagan administration official. “It’s always useful to have administrators who have their feet on the ground and are not preoccupied with ethereal issues of little consequence.”

For the record, Gann confirms she’s a registered Democrat. But, she said, “I separate out my personal politics from my work.”

Gann was drawn to Claremont McKenna because, in her words, this and the four other undergraduate colleges in the Claremont consortium “is the most important place working on undergraduate education west of the Mississippi.”

In her 11 years as Duke law dean, Gann said she discovered the best educated law students came from highly selective liberal arts colleges, not from big research universities.

“So that’s the place to be, not a place like Duke,” she said.

Inspired by England’s Oxford University, Claremont McKenna and each of the prestigious schools in Claremont--Pomona, Pitzer, Scripps and Harvey Mudd--offer the cozy academic environment of a small college, but the intellectual vibrancy of a large campus. Students can select classes from any other institutions.

Claremont McKenna, with about 1,000 students, advertises its education as the training of future business and political leaders. “A good fraction of our students go on to law school,” said government professor Jack Pitney. “She’s an attorney, so she’s a good fit that way.”

Gann said she wants to build on leadership training, particularly in the international arena. “In the post-Cold War era, we are being driven by globalization and world economics,” she said. “It’s an appropriate role for a liberal arts college to think about teaching leadership skills in that arena.”

Claremont McKenna’s reputation as a conservative school comes in part from some of its most visible alumni: Republican congressman David Dreier, former Assembly GOP Leader Rob Hurtt, top aides to Kenneth Starr, Newt Gingrich and Pete Wilson.

But Rossum and other faculty members point out that Claremont McKenna is not replete with conservatives--a survey conducted by students showed that most faculty members are Democrats.

Instead, he said, its conservative image rises from the fact that unlike most elite colleges, its faculty has more than just a few token conservative professors.

But that image may be shifting, given how liberal faculty members recently blocked an effort to win accreditation from a politically conservative academy.

Gann, 50, will take over when President Jack Stark retires June 30, after 29 years as campus leader. Stark gushed Wednesday about the trustees’ “first-rate choice” for his replacement.

Gann, a native of Monroe, N.C., studied mathematics at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the law at Duke, where Starr was a classmate.

Gann is married to Duke law professor William W. Van Alstyne, a nationally renowned expert in constitutional law. She said her husband, a native Californian, has not yet figured out what he will do next.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political expert at the Claremont Graduate University, was surprised by the choice. “It’s a very interesting statement that the college has chosen a woman and a woman who is positioned a bit more liberally than the school,” she said.